Mount Charleston Residents Return To Homes

BY MARIE ANDRUSEWICZ -- Firefighters say full containment of the Carpenter 1 fire should be reached by the end of the week. The fire is currently 70 percent contained, and many of the families who had evacuated the area have returned to their homes.

However, there’s a question as to whether the evacuation notice those families received from Metro Police was enforceable.

“The police can’t call a mandatory evacuation, that has to be done by the governor,” says Trevon Millard, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal covering the fire.

Millard says it’s not clear whether the police told residents that the evacuation was mandatory, but he says that he’s heard from some of the residents that they were under the impression that they had to leave.

“Saying (the evacuations) were mandatory has a lot more power than just voluntary evacuations,” says Millard.

He adds that laws in Nevada that determine who declares and enforces a mandatory evacuation are vague compared to those in other states. He says laws in Texas and North Carolina lay out very clearly who has the authority to force evacuations and what measures can be taken, including arresting residents who refuse to leave.

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“If a person comes forward and says they didn’t want to leave, they made me leave, there could be some repercussions here,” says Millard.